Hillrolling
by True Colours
Summary: Tart was seldom lonely, and he knew how to find fun in the simplest things. Fun could be salvaged, anywhere, any way. As he sat at the top of the hill, gazing at the setting sun, it felt good to be alive. But someone to roll with would be nice.


**Hill-rolling**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters mentioned in this fic.

**A/N: It was one of those 'the bunny clunked me over the head' moments. This oneshot is dedicated to my brother, Obi-wannabe, whose chance remark over dinner inspired this oneshot. Many thanks! My first fic about Pudding and Tart.**

**P.S. Set two years before TMM. Tart can teleport, but not well.**

The Cyniclons lived a life of hardship, with little comfort and little joy. But, like humans, they were playful, gregarious creatures, and whenever the chance of fun presented itself, there would always be some child resilient enough to take advantage of it.

It was one of the twenty or so sunny days that the Cyniclons could expect during the course of an average year. The distant sun struck glitters off the snow, the wind had dropped and from somewhere there was even the faint drip of running water.

'WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!'

A brown-haired boy sprinted across the snow flats to the point where they began to slope off and flung himself forward. Snow spurted up around him as he hit the ground and began to roll, going faster and faster as the incline increased. He reached the bottom in a whirl of snow and dizziness, lay stunned for thirty seconds or so and then sprang, fully recovered, to his feet.

'Paaaaaiiiiiii!'

He was calling towards a pair of older aliens who were engaged in a battle drill, circling tensely in the snow. At the interruption one of them broke off to enquire:

'What do you want, brat?'

'Excuse me, was I talking to _you,_ Kish?' the boy returned, with venom beyond his years. '_Pai_.'

The eldest Cyniclon turned with a sigh.

'What is it, Taruto?'

'Teleport me back up again!'

'Do it yourself,' the Cyniclon named Kish cut in. 'Do it yourself or you'll never learn.'

'Shut up, Kish, you know I can't...teleport...that...far,' Taruto said, the tips of his ears turning pink.

'My problem how?' Kish shrugged. Tart bent, scooped up a handful of snow and hurled it at him. Kish teleported just before it struck.

'Close, my young friend,' he smirked, 'but not close enough.'

'Kisshu, that's enough,' Pai broke in. 'Keep your focus. Come on.' He extended his hand towards Tart, who grasped it with a sullen expression, and transported them to the top of the hill. Once there, Pai released him quickly and immediately vanished once more.

Tart spent a few seconds glowering at the spot where he had stood, but then he flung off the anger with a practised mental shrug and a whoop and dived down the slope again.

Over and over, snow and sun, cold no longer life-sapping but brilliant, burning on his skin, burning in his lungs, ice crystals scratching his arms, which were exposed despite the frigid weather, flecks of snow stinging and melting in his eyes...

'Pai...'

A sigh.

And back up.

A pause to stare with childish amazement and the limitless arc of the blue sky, and then down again.

At the bottom of the hill Pai raised the red and purple fan which was his most prized possession, set his young cousin in his sights and struck.

Kish had recently entered the Cadet training school of which Pai had been a member for most of the latter half of his childhood. Pai knew that, despite his devil-may-care attitude, he was anxious to distinguish himself. Hence the endless combat drills they were doing in their free time.

Most of the cadets hero-worshipped Pai, who had a keen mind, a cool nerve and more muscle than most beings in his condition would have managed to build. Kish was an exception. He went out of his way to prove that he didn't answer to Pai, and as a result he was one of the very few people whom Pai respected. Kish was aware of this respect and deep down he valued it, with the result that beneath their show of hostility there ran an undercurrent of grim camaraderie. Pai stayed away from Kish and his fellow youngsters for the most part, descending occasionally to their level to put Kish through brutal but effective training sessions and put anyone who threatened his chances of survival swiftly and thoroughly in their place. Kish never spoke any good of his cousin, but was becoming adept at silencing any of his peers who insulted him, and recently he had tackled a boy Pai's age and broken his arm. The incident was firmly imprinted on Pai's mind; in this climate, a broken arm was almost as good as delivering the killing blow directly. At thirteen, Kish was fast becoming deadly. All the more reason to push him, push him hard, and never let up.

Tart arrived at the bottom of the hill once more. This time something told him that it would be pushing his luck to ask one of his cousins to teleport him back up. They were fighting so fiercely that their bodies were often blurred. The sight would have terrified him if he'd allowed himself to look at it for long enough, but he knew when not to dwell. He gave another mental shrug and made a running start, tackling the hill on foot.

Incandescent flurries of snow began first to trickle and then to pour around him as he climbed. Soon he gave up running and began to scramble up, his hands breaking through the thin crust of frozen snow and up to the wrist in powder. He flew for a few feet whenever the going got too slippery; whatever Kish said about his teleporting skills, he could at least fly, and fly _well_, sometimes even out-manoeuvring his heavier cousins in the air. He made his hasty, exhausting ascent, teeth gritted in fierce joy as the cold scalded his lungs. His hands and feet scrabbled in the sliding snow, driving him upwards, until he finally reached the top of the hill and rolled over onto the flat ground.

The climb had left him out of breath, and actually sweating. He flopped on his back and stared up at the sky, which was a flat, cloudless blue as far as the eye could see. He tipped his head to the side so that his cheek was pressed against the pack-ice and he could see the rainbows that winked and danced inside every individual crystal. Colour. He was hungry for it. The landscape offered nothing but white and blue; the splashes of colour provided by Pai's fan, Kish's hair, his own shirt, were blessed relief. But beneath his love of the rainbows there was another, even deeper desire, for something plainer and more lasting. Brown.

Tart had thought none of this out consciously. All he thought was that the rainbows were pretty, and now his eyes and mind turned away from them, up into the azure vault of sky. Somewhere up there, people said, there was a blue planet. Not a stark, blazing blue like the blue of the sky, but deep and many-toned. The blue of melted water. Tart had it on highest authority; all the grown-ups said it was there, but did he really believe in it? Right now, the sky looked solid. It was easier to believe at night, when it softened into an infinite black velvet full of silver stars. But that was a sight he had rarely seen. It was nothing short of suicide to stay out at night. Tart pushed himself thoughtfully to the edge of the slope and began to roll down again, more slowly this time but gathering speed as he went. He reached the bottom of the hill, allowed his momentum to run out of its own accord and said:

'What? You guys aren't training _again_?' as though he'd only just noticed.

'Yes,' Pai answered as Kish opened his mouth, probably to deliver some biting but energy-sapping retort.

'Why-y?' Tart demanded.

'You can't just put in a session here and there, brat, you have to commit,' Kish said. 'What's it to you anyway?' he added cantankerously.

'It's all you ever do. I'm BORED,' Tart complained, folding his hands behind his head and still staring straight up.

'So find a way to entertain yourself.'

'Kisshu,' Pai said quietly as Tart opened his mouth to yell that that was what he'd been doing, he'd been trying to do it all morning and Kish was making it darned difficult. 'Don't antagonise the boy.'

'So what are you going to do?' Tart continued, seizing the advantage of Pai's brief intervention. 'S'not good for you to train all the time. Why won't you play with me?'

'_Play_ with you?' Kish echoed incredulously, barely bothering to sneer. Pai threw him a brief, quelling glance, and Tart, taking courage from that, pressed on.

'Yes, take a break, it won't kill you.'

Suddenly Kish was light-hearted again. 'Sorry, midget, no can do.'

'_Why not_?' Tart demanded, incensed at such casual dismissal. Kish shrugged and made to turn away, but Tart leapt up and leaped in front of him, beating at his chest with his fists. 'Come on, what makes you so high and mighty and _serious_ all of a sudden? Come on, Kish!' Suddenly he left off his thumping and looked up into his cousin's face, eyes wide and appealing. 'Let's all roll down the hill.'

Kish performed another bizarre mood shift, his face closing. 'No.'

'Why? Come on, you'll like it, it'll be fun!'

Kish looked at him coldly. 'You still don't get it?'

Tart gazed up at him, at a loss.

'How about this,' Pai said, calling back both their attention. Tart whipped his head around to look up at him.

'We'll roll down with you once,' Pai continued, 'but then Kisshu and I are going back. We won't teleport you anymore.'

It was the final straw.

'That's not fair!' Tart screamed. 'It's not fair and you know it!'

'It's your choice, brat, take it or leave it,' Kish shrugged. 'Do we roll down with you, or do you carry on getting teleported. Hurry up and pick now, I haven't got all day.'

'Bastard,' Tart hissed.

'Who're you calling names?'

'Hah!' Tart exclaimed. 'You're scared, both of you! Scared of rolling down a hill! Just wait till Deep-Blue hears about this! Yaaah!'

Kish's eyes flashed. 'Just for that, brat, I'll roll down that hill. 'C'mon, Pai. You.' He fixed Tart with a glare. 'Take my hand.'

'Yes!' Tart cried triumphantly bounding forward. Too late Kish realised that he'd just bowed exactly to Tart's wishes, but it was too late to back out now. There was an expression on Pai's face that reminded him on no uncertain terms that he was still only a child. To make up for it he gripped Tart's hand extra hard, flexing his other hand to feign indifferent to Pai's even harder grip on it. The air rippled as the three Cyniclons teleported to the top of the hill.

'Right,' Pai growled. 'Make sure you keep well apart to avoid any –'

'Awww, _Pai_, do you HAVE to turn everything into a military exercise?' Kish moaned. Pai flicked a half-amused glance at him. Only a child, indeed.

'You can't do it as a military exercise; it kills the whole point,' Tart piped up. 'And you can't organise your spacing. You need to throw yourself over the edge, and you have to be close because you have to hold hands.'

'Alright.' Kish seized Tart's hand in a vice-like grip. 'What now?'

'Then you line up facing the slope,' Tart said, pulling on their hands, 'and then you run forward screaming loudly.'

'I draw the line at screaming,' Pai interrupted.

'Do you want me to stop pestering to be teleported or not?' Tart hissed, eyes narrowing. The shadow of a smile flashed across Pai's face as he stared straight ahead.

'Stand at arm's length; we don't want a collision,' was all he said. Tart and Kish glanced sideways at each other, and then simultaneously and very surreptitiously rolled their eyes.

'OK, let's get this over wi_iiith_!' Kish cried. 'YYYAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG!' The three of them dashed forwards and hurled themselves over the edge.

The world dissolved. Tart found himself laughing uncontrollably as he rolled over and over, snow spraying up and over him, and not just in his own wake this time, but kicked up by his cousins as well. He could hear the muffled thud-scrunch of their passage, and an occasional 'oof!' as one of them took an unexpected bash. No doubt they'd forgotten to tuck their elbows in. Especially Pai, who hadn't been a kid in years. It was surprising he wasn't fossilised by now, or else just stuck in an attack pattern forever. He laughed harder, so hard his chest constricted, and then he choked on a mouthful of snow and slid to a skidding, spluttering halt.

Kish came to rest a few yards away and got to his feet, chuckling.

'I've got to hand it to you, brat, that was pretty fun,' he said, walking over to where he'd deposited his dragon swords and beginning to dust the snow off them. Pai was silent. He stayed lying on his back in the snow, his head turned to one side, watching Tart. His young cousin was still lying down, breathless with laughter. Pai worried about him. It wasn't good for him to waste his time playing when all resources should be devoted towards staying alive, but nor was it good for him to have no fun. He was growing up so fast...it was all a result of this stupid, hopeless, _useless_ planet. All the more reason for him to train as hard as he possibly could, to try and make their generation the one that would bring back the reason. Which meant that he couldn't afford to waste time playing with Tart. It was hopeless, a vicious circle.

'What?' Tart demanded.

'Shake the snow out of your clothes before you get up,' Pai instructed blankly, getting to his feet.

'Wha – where are you going?' Tart sat up on his elbows as Pai bent to retrieve the kit bag he'd dumped to one side. Kish had finished drying his swords, and vanished them with an ostentatious flick.

'Home, like we said,' he answered carelessly.

'WHAT! I thought you said it was fun!'

'Not fun enough that I have to do it a zillion times,' Kish shrugged, shouldering his bag.

Tart flopped onto his back once more. 'You're so _boring_!' he flung at the others. 'Train train train, then off home. What, are your _toes_ getting cold?'

They didn't answer, though he could hear them shuffling around behind them.

'Don't be mean!' he ranted. 'You're always pretending to be so _bothered_ about me and where I am and what I'm doing, but you don't really care, do you, do you?'

Silence.

'I hate you,' he called experimentally. Nothing.

'Pah,' he announced to the sky. 'They've teleported.'

The sun winked blurrily in the corner of his eye, as though in agreement.

'Well,' he observed, 'they have to come back and meet me along the route; it's too far to walk before evening and they know I can't teleport. Hah.'

A little gust of wind blew, reminding him suddenly of the cold. His feet were going numb. He sat up slowly, feeling the ache of launching himself a dozen times into hard-packed snow. He thought that, even though not doing so would annoy Pai, it might be best to shake the snow out of his clothes.

'Stupid Pai,' he muttered to himself, without any real rancour. 'Stupid Kish. Thinks he's so big. I'll beat him some day.' The day when he would do the same to Pai was still too far in the future for celebration.

He picked himself up, snapped his collar twice to dislodge the snow, and then turned to look up the hill. _One more time_? He asked himself. _Yep_.

He began the long climb up once more, moving more slowly this time, his hands brushing the ice to balance himself. At the top he halted for a moment to catch his breath. The snow around him beginning to glint deep orange as the sun tilted towards the horizon. Hill-rolling was fun, but...it had been more fun when Kish and Pai had been doing it, even though they'd been so grumpy. There weren't many other children in his settlement – a few too young to go out alone, one delicate and sickly, another his age but already in training...no, he was fine on his own. Tart was seldom lonely, and he knew how to find fun in the simplest things. Fun could be salvaged, anywhere, any way. As he sat at the top of the hill, gazing out at the setting sun, it felt sharply good just to be alive.

But someone to roll with would be nice.

He pushed off.

* * *

She rolled.

Down the steep hill in the centre of the park, ears alert for the yelps that would give her advance warning if any of her brothers were to hurt themselves going down. She could hear the squeals and laughter of other children playing nearby, and the omnipresent roar of traffic, but nothing that required her attention. So she let herself roll.

At the bottom of the hill Pudding attempted to sit up, then lay back down very quickly as the world lurched and span around her. She dug her nails into the grass, willing it to stop rocking, and very slowly opened her eyes.

'Waa-aah, big head-spin, na no da,' she said to the world in general.

'Pudding-onee-chan! Pudding! Are you alive?'

The ground vibrated to the sound of running footsteps, and then her brothers were crowding around her, anxiously poking her and pulling back her eyelids to check for signs of life.

'OFF, na no da!' she cried, beating them away. 'Pudding is fine!'

'Again, Pudding, again!' they chorused, their fears assuaged. Pudding sat up once more, and this time the Earth held still.

'Come on,' she said gamely. 'Let's go up the big hill, na no da. Ah, sunny day.'

'Hai, sunny day!' Cries of agreement rang out all around her. One of her brothers ran up to her, and without waiting for him to ask she swung him up onto her back.

'Hey!' another protested. 'It's my turn.'

'No it's not, no da, and you know it,' she returned crisply, and they fell meekly into line. Pudding always kept scrupulous track of whose turn it was to do anything. It saved a lot of time. She took the hill at a run with her small brother bouncing on her back, the others whizzing ahead and leaping around her. At the top of the hill she flopped to her knees and rolled her brother off her back

'My turn next time!' the youngest of the boys shouted.

'Yes,' she agreed, 'your turn next time.'

It was tiring, but it kept them happy, and she was instinctively aware of how essential that was. Her mother seemed tired these days, all her energy taken up with looking after Pudding's baby sister, so on every fine day Pudding would herd her brothers out to the park and keep them there as long as possible. Today she had managed to steer them into a pastime she found particularly enjoyable, and carrying them up the hill really wasn't so bad. It would all be worth it when her father came in, tired and sweating from training, and swung her into his arms and asked: 'what did my Pudding-denka do today? I hope her bad brothers were obedient to their onee-sama!'

And maybe, late at night, her mother would come softly into her room and kiss her goodnight, and whisper: 'arigatou, my brave Pudding-chan,' while Pudding breathed her sweet smell of flowers and baking.

So Pudding was cheerful as she ran her brothers up and down the hill. The grass was green and the sky was blue; weather like this never failed to raise her spirits. A cool breeze blew between the trees, momentarily drowning the sound from the road and cooling her sweaty face.

'Pudding-onee-chan...'

'You boys are HEAVY, na no da,' she gasped. 'Roll down without me this time, Pudding needs a moment to get her breath back, no da.'

'Hai,' her brother agreed, and with a loud chorus of whoops they were off, diving down the slope once more. Pudding was enveloped in a moment of quiet.

'If I had a friend doing this with me,' she said aloud, 'I would only have to do half the work, na no da.' She cupped her chin in her hand and thought. She didn't lack companions, but maybe someone who could help a bit...?

'A girl,' she said. 'Too many boys in this family, no da. One day my baby sister will be a beautiful lady, and she and Pudding will be proud to be seen together, na no da. And somebody who is also the oldest. Then their brothers can play with mine while we watch over them.'

She sighed and lay back in the grass. The deep blue vault of the sky looked limitless. Pudding was too sunny natured to every feel miserable for long, and had never put a name to loneliness, but at that moment it seemed to her that this friend, if they existed, must be a very long way away.

'There's lots of stars up there, and lots of planets,' she reasoned, 'so there's no reason why they shouldn't exist, but maybe...maybe Pudding will not meet them for a very long time, na no da.'

Tonight she would ask her father why they couldn't see the stars during the day, and then which one he thought had a planet with people on it. And tomorrow she and her brothers would start to build a spaceship to get there. Though space ships needed a lot of hammers and metal, she knew that. Maybe it would have to be a ladder. At least her brothers, despite their rambunctious nature, were always eager to help her any way they could.

'And they will enjoy it, na no da,' she said decisively. And even if it took a long time, there was always a chance that the friend would be building too.

'And then we meet in the middle, na no da!' she cried joyfully, bounding to her feet, and leapt down the slope and rolled so hard and fast that the park had swirled into a bright, dizzy clutter of green and blue by the time she reached the bottom.

**A/N: The original gimmick of this story was meant to be the teleporting up and back down, but the angst kind of grew...I hope I ended it hopefully enough, though. **

**True**


End file.
